Introduction

In the introduction to this volume, Pemberton traces the historical genealogy of the term civil society and notes its consistent deployment in contrast to a series of other spheres: the family, market, the city of God and the state. Following the French historian Dominique Colas, Pemberton suggests that the popular current distinction ‘state-civil society’ is not a neutral partition of these autonomous spheres, but a constitutive aspect of the economy’s current dominance over both. This leads Pemberton to argue that the growing suspicion with civil society, evident in recent academic literature and contemporary suspicion with the role and remit of the state (shared by the political left and right) should be analysed together as part of a larger neoliberal whole.